Fatigue, why am I hearing so many signs of fatigue?

In 2008, a perfect storm formed.  The largest recession/depression since 1929 hit the world.  At the same time, we all experienced the full fledged 10 year adoption cycle/impact of the internet.  Through the next four years, two trends emerged:  The markets required companies to do more, do it better and do it faster and all this with fewer people. 

We are now beginning to experience, individually and organizationally a sense of fatigue that comes from depletion.  When I was actively rowing, I learned a valuable lesson related to depletion.  In a rowing race, you start the race with a very intense sprint which immediately puts your body in to a state of anaerobic depletion (this state means that the rowers body is both attempting to take in more oxygen then is possible and is unable to convert fats/carbohydrates to energy…. So, the rower begins the race in a state of pan “pins and needles” in the legs, etc.).  By the end of a six minute race, a rower has performed the fatigue equivalent of playing, full out, two back to back basketball games. 

The lesson learned…. step away.  There are times that continuing a pace puts one, or one’s organization, in peril.  Now, for those who are ready to respond with “Yeah… and watch my customers go away and my progress melt away” let me offer that the purpose of stepping away is to focus on improvement and efficiency.  It is not about giving up. 

So, tell me… what would you do if you stepped away?  What would your team do if they paused and regrouped?  What would change about the spiral I see of faster, better, cheaper? 

Why are more and more people in business talking about vulnerability?

Please follow me.  I am watching the Seahawks finish off the Panthers.  One of the announcers says that Wilson, the Seahawk quarterback, visions the game before it ever happens and then manifests it.  Following the psychology of sports, I was not surprised to hear terms like “vision” and “manifest” spouted by commentators of today.  The other eight people in the room were surprised and commented on it. 

Soon, I began hearing other words about the vulnerability and trust developed for the level of teamwork achieved.  Now, I have to admit, unless you watched Oprah, then I imagine you haven’t heard the word vulnerability bandied about too often in a rough contact sport like football or in male dominated business meetings. 

Yet, there it was.  So, what is vulnerability?  I’ll give you my definition… pure and simple it is risking something or being at risk.  Applied to business groups, I believe it means placing oneself in a position where others may potentially have power over us. 

Patrick Lencioni in the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team starts from the position that many of us feel a need for safety and we equate this to invulnerability.  So, feeling vulnerable is not something we do very lightly. 

Risking is a first step to producing trust and trust is one of the foundations of creating a highly effective team.  So, what is it that needs to be risked?  That actually depends on each person.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself, or others and which, if answered honestly and with self-awareness would show vulnerability, risk: 

•  What is it that if I revealed it, I would feel that I looked less than good?
•  If my team new something about me, what do I believe would undermine my authority?
• Why don’t people like to work with me?
• What is my weakest skill and how do I shore up that lack of skill?

First, if you can truly answer these questions, even to yourself, you are a person worth getting to know.  Second, most of us can’t? 

•  "There is no 'I' in TEAM" ~ Anonymous
• "A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle" ~ Japanese proverb
• "A boat doesn’t go forward if each one is rowing their own way" ~ Swahili proverb
• "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success" ~ Henry Ford
• "One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team" ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar
• "A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skill of the others" ~ Norman Hidle
• "You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note" ~ Doug Floyd

“Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” Patrick Lencioni

 

So, what would you risk in order to create trust?  What is it that you do that makes creating  trust more difficult? What actions do you take to create trust? 

Can Companies with fewer than 500 employees do effective training and should they?

Universally, companies with fewer that 500 employees are pretty poor at training employees.  The reasons for this are understandable and many, starting with flat organizations, populated by doers and a mindset that people are hired to add value. 

The reasons that training becomes more important to a company as it grows from 15 to 50 10 120 employees are just as universal: employees stop providing as much value if they are not challenged and developed; self-learners are extremely rare; companies whose employees, processes and systems don’t improve get stuck/complacent at points in their growth. 

So, what’s a CEO/Company to do?  Here are a few options that reduce risk, improve sustainable growth and provide size appropriate focus to the training that is needed:  Recognize training is important and that training is something you model; not what your company can train and what training it may not be able to provide. 

If you are an executive or business owner without a coach, then you don’t yet recognize that training is important or that it is something you model.  I know of no professional athlete who is without a trainer/coach.  Maybe they know something you don’t know?  If you are getting coaching ask yourself how much you are communicating its value to your team/employees?  Do you have goals for the coaching you receive and do you share those goals/KPI’s?  Do you include your key reports in the coaching process? 

As to training others… I have found that in most companies of the 15 and 50 employee size, that they are best at technical training, next best at operational training and usually weakest in training leadership, management and supervisory skills (soft skills:  communication, professional improvement, etc.).  These are important roles/skills and tools.  They should be a part of employees professional improvement plan and there should be some budget attached to the training involved. 

Back to the technical training…. If you make something, provide a service or distribute something, the knowledge base and tools to do it and do it better are likely to be within your and your employees wheelhouse.  Meaning that you have best practices, skills and tools that can be taught.  The companies that do this the best focus on three aspects of training: the provide training in very narrow areas and cross train; they train people to train and make the training a constant part of employee’s jobs. 

So, what works in your company?  How did you initiate training?  How did you make sure that training was a part of what everyone does? 

The Power of “Not Yet!”

This winter, I am undergoing my usual:  I have a plan for improving my golf game.  It includes a certain number of lessons at an indoor golf range and practice sessions.  What I did not initially grasp is that it would require me to embrace the concept of “Not yet”. 

You see, as I completed my fifth year of playing golf, I thought that I was going to be working on nuance and refinement of my swing.  (you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t golf)

I walked in to the first lesson and heard myself declare, “ I am hitting my driver 200-225 yards.  I may as well put it away and just hit my 3 wood.  I hit a 3 wood  about as far and more accurately.”  My instructor asked, how far I wanted to hit my driver and I answered by saying that on longer courses my second shot was not a 7 iron but a wood, or at best a rescue club.  This means that my strategy of being on the green in two is significantly reduced.  My accuracy and the likelihood of parring the hole go down if it takes me three strokes to get to the green.  To hit with better golfers, I needed to hit the drive 250 yards. 

What my instructor offered was to get me to hit my tee shot farther by spring and as, or more, accurately then I was when I hit it a shorter distance. 

What I have had to confront is failure.  I confronted the possibility that I can’t hit a golf ball longer.  To avoid the frustration of failing, I have undertaken a mantra, “not yet”. 

How many times have you said (or heard others say), “I can’t do that”.  The truth of the statement is self-evident and self-defeating.  By exchanging the above words for “not yet”, I get to take failure off the table. 

In business this is often critical.  To succeed, we have to try things that we have never done and have no data to support our accomplishing.  We have staff/teams who get stuck by saying, “We can’t do that!” and a simple substitution is to exclaim, “not yet!”. 

If you can get your teams/key employees to embrace “not yet” you are half way home to achieving a goal.  Your mindset will shift.  You still have to take action, accomplish your goal.  What is removed is the hurdle of telling yourself, as you work toward that goal, that you are failing.  Try it and let me know how differently you feel? 

What mindsets do you create to increase your and your team’s odds for success in a project or new endeavor? 

Customer Expectations

I always watch for trends and I am noticing something that is really disturbing me.  Many clients are indicating that they and their teams are feeling exhausted.  This is a recipe for disaster. 

Let’s talk about how we might have arrived at this point and how it is showing up and then I want to hear from you about how much you identify with this issue and what you are doing about it. 

Over the last decade, market forces have required businesses to operate leaner, while expectations by their customers is that they will run faster and with a higher level of quality.    All my clients are now doing more, doing it better and doing it faster (no matter what the “it” is). 

The result that I am noticing is that resilience is reduced.  They are less able to rebound from the unexpected (Black Swan events) and their energy is more directed, then ever before, on the tactical.  It also means that we are all depleted and more fragile, as people and organizations.

People are laid low by colds/flu’s and take longer to recover.  There is a frenetic pace to work and here, let me add that all my clients and the businesses I talk with are having record setting sales and margins are not a large concern.  At the same time, I get the sense that all these people are looking over their should and wondering, “How long will these good sales times last?”. 

The impact is that I see/hear less joy and less satisfaction from the accomplishments that people achieve.  There is more resignation than I can remember ever experiencing.  These attributes, unchecked, will leave anyone, or any organization, depleted and susceptible to being blind sided.  So, tell me, am I missing the boat?  Are things more positive then I am perceiving?  Based on your responses, I will develop my next blogs (either move on from the subject or begin to develop it and solutions).  Let me know.   

Market demands and the speed of business

While everyone talks about it, very few are doing more than survive it!  What is my subject today?.... speed!  Over the last twenty years Markets, customers and technology have led to unprecedented speed. 

Your customers expectations are:  1) You are simply waiting around with nothing to do, until they text, email, call or, as some Neanderthal still do, walk in; 2) they want it cheap; and 3) they want it immediately. This used to be the land of retail and now, B2B companies are feeling this pinch. 

So, what’s a B2B to do?  Let’s start with know thy self.  What does your company do and do you do it so well that no one else is your peer?  If you resemble this then why are you taking those customers/clients who suck you dry and reduce your ability to perform at the highest level? 

If you do it faster then you better figure out how to replicate that speed.  Again, who is it that sucks you dry and slows you down?  Do you have to specialize?  Not necessarily…. You do have to decide who is your target and who is not. 

If you are getting the distinct feeling that I think many companies try and take on customers/clients who are not in their wheelhouse, then you are getting my message. 

When is the last time you and your staff sat down and developed/updated your list or description of the ideal customer? When did you last sit down and made a list of who in your existing group of customers met the must haves on that list?  Who meets those requirements and is not your customer? 

The Power of “Not Yet!”

This winter, I am undergoing my usual:  I have a plan for improving my golf game.  It includes a certain number of lessons at an indoor golf range and practice sessions.  What I did not initially grasp is that it would require me to embrace the concept of “Not yet”. 

You see, as I completed my fifth year of playing golf, I thought that I was going to be working on nuance and refinement of my swing.  (you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t golf)

I walked in to the first lesson and heard myself declare, “ I am hitting my driver 200-225 yards.  I may as well put it away and just hit my 3 wood.  I hit a 3 wood  about as far and more accurately.”  My instructor asked, how far I wanted to hit my driver and I answered by saying that on longer courses my second shot was not a 7 iron but a wood, or at best a rescue club.  This means that my strategy of being on the green in two is significantly reduced.  My accuracy and the likelihood of parring the hole go down if it takes me three strokes to get to the green.  To hit with better golfers, I needed to hit the drive 250 yards. 

What my instructor offered was to get me to hit my tee shot farther by spring and as, or more, accurately then I was when I hit it a shorter distance. 

What I have had to confront is failure.  I confronted the possibility that I can’t hit a golf ball longer.  To avoid the frustration of failing, I have undertaken a mantra, “not yet”. 

How many times have you said (or heard others say), “I can’t do that”.  The truth of the statement is self-evident and self-defeating.  By exchanging the above words for “not yet”, I get to take failure off the table. 

In business this is often critical.  To succeed, we have to try things that we have never done and have no data to support our accomplishing.  We have staff/teams who get stuck by saying, “We can’t do that!” and a simple substitution is to exclaim, “not yet!”. 

If you can get your teams/key employees to embrace “not yet” you are half way home to achieving a goal.  Your mindset will shift.  You still have to take action, accomplish your goal.  What is removed is the hurdle of telling yourself, as you work toward that goal, that you are failing.  Try it and let me know how differently you feel? 

What mindsets do you create to increase your and your team’s odds for success in a project or new endeavor? 

Can Companies with fewer than 500 employees do effective training and should they?

Universally, companies with fewer that 500 employees are pretty poor at training employees.  The reasons for this are understandable and many, starting with flat organizations, populated by doers and a mindset that people are hired to add value. 

The reasons that training becomes more important to a company as it grows from 15 to 50 10 120 employees are just as universal: employees stop providing as much value if they are not challenged and developed; self-learners are extremely rare; companies whose employees, processes and systems don’t improve get stuck/complacent at points in their growth. 

So, what’s a CEO/Company to do?  Here are a few options that reduce risk, improve sustainable growth and provide size appropriate focus to the training that is needed:  Recognize training is important and that training is something you model; no what your company can train and what training it may not be able to provide. 

If you are an executive or business owner without a coach, then you don’t yet recognize that training is important or that it is something you model.  I know of no professional athlete who is without a trainer/coach.  Maybe they know something you don’t know?  If you are getting coaching ask yourself how much you are communicating its value to your team/employees?  Do you have goals for the coaching you receive and do you share those goals/KPI’s?  Do you include your key reports in the coaching process? 

As to training others… I have found that in most companies of the 15 and 50 employee size, that they are best at technical training, next best at operational training and usually weakest in training leadership, management and supervisory skills (soft skills:  communication, professional improvement, etc.).  These are important roles/skills and tools.  They should be a part of employees professional improvement plan and there should be some budget attached to the training involved. 

Back to the technical training…. If you make something, provide a service or distribute something, the knowledge base and tools to do it and do it better are likely to be within your and your employees wheelhouse.  Meaning that you have best practices, skills and tools that can be taught.  The companies that do this the best focus on three aspects of training: the provide training in very narrow areas and cross train; they train people to train and make the training a constant part of employee’s jobs. 

So, what works in your company?  How did you initiate training?  How did you make sure that training was a part of what everyone does? 

Adding Value to Your Company

Too often, business owners and executives with whom I work, are focused solely on increasing their sales.  To do so puts your company and its value in jeopardy.  Not every customer is a good customer.  

I often turn our conversations from sales to how they can add value to their company.  Adding value to your company should be a part of your “think time”.  So, first make sure you are creating and using blocks of time to figure out strategically where you are going and then make sure you look at how you will:

• Drive Performance
• Protect yourself
• Make yourself obsolete

If you are already driving performance with Key Performance Indicators and other non-financial leading measurement tools, terrific!  Now figure our how you will perfect yourself.  Insurance is the tip of this iceberg.  Be sure to focus on getting the right structure and figure out your continuity plan.  Then, make sure that you look at your own strengths. 

Are you the only one in your company who can provide the value that you provide?  If so, what will you do if you are suddenly unable to perform, like you are taken away in a red truck! 

At the end of this month, Excell, along with other key players in the business community, are hosting over 60 CEO’s and their partners…. business partners and life partners.  We will all go to a resort, take a weekend to tackle these questions, share best practices and have some fun. 

Each year we sponsor a weekend like this because we believe it is important to have think time.  We think it is important to mix think time with executing on skills.  We think that sharing and networking, in the right environment, produces real value.  Not least and not last, we think fun should be involved.

How do you get your think time?  What is it you do to make sure this time is productive?  How disciplined are you in making this happen regularly and making it work for you?  

Creating the future

 “Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do….The best way to predict the future is to invent it!”, Alan Kay

How much time do you spend thinking about how to disrupt your industry?  What would it take to stand everything on its head? 

All my clients tend to enjoy what they make/sell/do. About 25% of them are thinking about how to change how people buy/use/experience what they do.  These 25% spend more time dreaming, more time looking around corners and more time focused on improving every aspect of their company. 

These are the business owners who are predicting the future by inventing it.  If you want to be one of them, here are some specific and simple activities that will increase your chances for inventing the future you desire: 

1.    Vision: The more clarity you have and the better you are able describe to others what that vision looks, feels and sounds like, the better

2.    Desire:  If you don’t want it (whatever the “it” is) it is unlikely you will get it

3.    Commitment:  What will it take to achieve your dream goal? 

If you are still ready for more, then do these:

4.    Learn to be disciplined (I did not say easy… I said simple)

5.    Learn to be curious

6.    Learn to be resilient

Alan Kay accomplished a great deal in his professional life.  So can you.  Being a Member in an Excell Group is not a sit back and be filled up classroom.  It is tough work.  Cheers to all those who take on this kind of work.  What have you found creates your desired future?

What we think, determines what we see

What I heard and read indicated that being able to stretch and twist was critical to scoring in the 70’s and 80’s in a round of golf.  Throughout my four years playing golf, I told myself that what would ultimately hold me back was my body’s inflexibility.

So, when I began studying the physics of golf, I was a bit surprised to find that while it can be important, flexibility is not fundamental to forming a smooth easy golf swing that rockets a drive 250 yards.  What is more amazing to me is that I began hitting the ball further while maintaining and improving my accuracy.  Why amazement, because I began to see others (really good golfers) maintaining looseness and suppleness in their wrists and arms throughout their swing. 

Had these golfers all changed their swings?  No, I simply was seeing something for the first time… something that had always been there. With these “new” observations, I see a path to playing golf down in to the rarified air of scratch golfers. 

A part of the work I do with my business clients, is getting them to see a belief that they have and how that belief is limiting them.  My client’s often believe something exists and that belief is keeping them from growing their businesses in a sustainable way.  Here some examples of limiting beliefs that clients I have work with have held:

• I have too much to do and can’t focus down on one thing

• If I just work harder, the company can get over this hurdle

• There is no way I can train our team.  I just need to get people who have done this before. 

• We can’t finance our growth and no bank will finance it. 

Many of the CEO/business owners in our Excell Groups, tell me that a big part of the value in their group is looking around and seeing others who have not let their beliefs limit the growth of their businesses and then lay down that belief and go grow their own business. 

Ask yourself, “What do I see and does my belief around what I see hold me back?”  Love to hear some of your thoughts/beliefs and what you would like to do about them. 

How am I doing?

This past week, I was working with a client who is exceptionally good at everything.  He asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks and allowed us to deepen our conversation and the results that we both received from our time together. 

After about an hour and fifteen minutes of working together, he asked, “How am I doing?”  I asked him a couple of questions to make sure I understood the focus and framework of his question.  He was literally asking me how effective, efficient and productive he was being as a client. 

He was valuing our time together, believes I am a professional with significant experience and wanted to know how he compared to others and, regardless of comparisons, wanted to know how he could improve.  His simple question kept reverberating throughout my day. 

From the taxi ride to the airport, to the operations training I conducted before he and I met, it was clear to me that I felt I was smarter and more knowledgeable then those I had come in front of that day.  I was often telling these other professionals how to do their jobs.  

I am a blessed guy.  I get to work with some pretty amazing people during the day and then spend my evenings with a very talented executive and leader, my wife.  With all of these people I tend to feel humbled and it creates curiosity.  I mean that I often feel curious around them and wonder about what I can learn. 

What this client taught me this week, was how one question can open the door to a lifetime of relationships where curiosity is foundational.  You better believe that the next taxi in which I sit will be driven by someone who can teach me something. 

So, which of your employees never teaches you anything?  What questions do you need to ask in order to achieve a state of curiosity? 

What the science around creating Joy tells us about leadership

This year, I have committed to the following:  Each day, I am making at least three statements of gratitude, at least three times per week I am acting kindly toward someone(s). I am journaling that I have completed my commitments. 

Sounds pretty simple.  Yup.  It is pretty simple.  So, why do this and what do I think is my payoff?  Well, from the reading on what is now being called the science of joy, there should be an impact on how I show up, how I feel about those around me/my life and the results I achieve. 

I started this project on day one… first day of the year.  During this time, I have noticed that I have fewer negative thoughts.  I mean from how the weather affects me (I live in Seattle and that ought to say enough right there) to what I find my mind is doing (on what it is focusing) when I sit down and talk to someone. 

It is now March and this month, I have counted four different people, just this past week,  telling me something is different.  I have asked these unsolicited purveyors of feedback to tell me what they saw.  Each has said almost the same thing.  The components of their statements are:  you are more present; you are more relaxed and you appear happier. 

So, I am not a large enough universe on which to build a theory and I will tell you that my results are simply paralleling those of researchers who are testing by the thousands.  Let’s just say early indications continue and others are noticing and more are responding to the impact of my weekly gratitude statements, unexpected kind acts and journaling. 

Does this shift have any impact on running a company?  I think it does. 

How we show up creates the framework for which we do or don’t get things done.  The 12^th Man, Seahawks fans, made Seattle a really difficult city to come to for other NFL teams.  The attitude of fans is, “We really can make a difference and have to do our part to disrupt and impact those visitors.”  Scientists are learning, as they explore human emotions and how we are wired, that the chemicals that turn on and off certain emotions, can impact and change an individual.  If one person shows up acting differently and their mindset is intentional, it is harder to throw them off balance.  This means that a CEO’s attitude can positively and negatively impact those around them and the art of leadership is getting some pretty strong guidance from the research being done. 

In the meantime, I am having more fun.  How about you? 

Are Employee Reviews Dead?

All those who really dislike employee reviews, please raise your hand.  What everyone?  Well not surprising.  Most of us hate doing things that show no purpose, progress or value.  For most of us, the employee review is just that, a waste of time.

These days, everyone wants their feedback immediately, no waiting.  That has produced some good movement in the halls of business.  Managers to CEOs spend more time observing, listening and coaching. 

With all the immediacy, is there any reason anymore to do employee reviews?  I am going to provide a qualified yes.  The qualification comes from how we must break away from form and focus on content. 

Recently, I was working with a client and, as a relatively new business owner, he was asking about employee reviews.  He is smart, earnest and does not want to waste time, his or his employees. Like me, at the beginning of my career, he wants to provide value and feels that employee reviews are important.  I listened and found myself thinking that I would not want to be in the review process at this company. 

We talked for a while about reviews and I came away with an unsettling question …. Why after several decades of managing people am I still unresolved about how and when to provide employee reviews.  Throughout my career I have shifted from feeling that employee reviews were a waste of time, to useful and back again to feeling that I can do better and employees can receive better if I scrap once or twice a year employee reviews.   

One of the major reasons Executives conduct employee reviews is to catalog and correct the past (what the employee did) and set guides for the future (what the employee will do six months from now. 

Unfortunately, both the future and the past are simply markers and don’t change or improve behaviors.  Over the years, I have come to believe that intention, focus and immediacy are more important than any other factors to influence/improve people.  Being a fairly simple guy, challenged by keeping too much in my head and I know that I learn better if I avoid taking on too much and I improve at what ever I am doing if I focus down to one or two skills/issues.  

So, I will be bold here and suggest that you do something different…. Come up with a clear issue on which you and the employee agree is the issue most in need of improvement and the strength most valuable to continue to improve.  The strength is usually not difficult to arrive at and doing so in a collaborative way with your report is likely to increase the success rate for achieving the improvement.

To determine on which issue your report should improve, obtain the feedback of three to five people (the peers, people reporting to your report and one person who is either outside your company (customer) or who is outside the employee’s department.  Complete a start, stop and continue questionnaire/interview (simply asking what the person completing the questionare/interview thinks Sam or Jane should start doing that they are not now doing; continue doing something that is liked/good and what should they stop doing)

Let the subject of the start stop and continue have a list of those issues, on one condition:  They have to choose one issue, from the list, on which they will improve.  Then they must meet with each of the people providing feedback; show them the list; tell them on which issue the report has chosen to work; and (this is key) ask each of those providing feedback to help she/he with the chosen issue for improvement. 

Your job then becomes:  adding one strategic/longer range point on which they work and coaching to make sure the report is a success around the chosen issue. 

Keep on walking around.  Keep providing immediate feedback.  Just focus yourself on making the feedback serve you and your employee.  Define and agree on what that focus will be and what will be the outcome.  Create measures.  Coach, teach and mentor to those defined issues and create consequences for the outcome(s).   

You may even find you aren’t dreading employee reviews anymore.  So, what do you do to make reviews more effective? 

What does the science around creating Joy tell us about leadership

How we approach a task, the inner thoughts we hold around it, to a great extent, determine outcomes.  What it feels like.   Our attitudes, and beliefs all these things have a profound impact on the result we experience. 

Excell is about taking consistent, regular and frequent steps to move from one behavior to new ones.  Excell is designed for business owners and senior executives and is focused on their desire to get to or stay at the top of their game? 

So, back to inner thoughts and their impact on our approach.  Recently, I read some articles and research on creating habits and sustaining change (let me know if you want some of the sources).  After taking in the points of these articles and the research conducted on the impact of seemingly small actions, I decided to experience some of them.  Six months ago, I added to my meditation practice, a practice of finding 3 things about which I felt gratitude. 

I also set some, albeit subjective, measurements to determine changes.  Prior to starting the experience, I began noting how I felt at the beginning and end of each day and asked others to indicate how they experienced me.  For thirty days, I noted, each day, a plus or minus.  Then I began a daily practice of noting three things about which I felt grateful.  What I found was a substantial shift in the number of pluses noted in my calendar. 

While, not a well designed or statistically significant experiment, what I found was a substantial shift in how I approached every situation.  Personally, I am convinced and am looking to extend this practice. 

The sense of well being I feel is palpable.  OK… so why talk about this in this blog.  It is, after all, a business blog…. so, where does the business part come in?  Well, think about how resilient you are.  You lose a big customer, would it take you down?  What if you could experience a stressful moment or a big downturn with more resilience?  Would that aid you in recovering?  I sure bet it would.  I am finding that I am far better inoculated and less impacted by the stuff coming at me and I attribute the shift to the last 6 month experiment. 

I am about to undertake a second phase in which I will find an opportunity to tell at least three people each week, that I feel grateful for their part in my life and why?  I am betting that this will not only affect them and increases the strength of the relationship that I have with these various people, it will increase my resilience. 

Like communicating a vision/dream in business, telling people about dream is key to manifesting it.  Let’s see how this turns out. 

Follow along.  Let’s see what happens.  For those of you already doing well at communicating your dream, how do you do that (what are the different ways)?  How often do you tell/repeat your message?